In a different light...
It’s possible that I may be hopelessly
nostalgic and condemned to live forever in the past (a sad state of affairs, though a
typical trait for a claret), but I must admit feeling a pang or two on my first visit to
the new Turf Moor. I can live with the stands; they’re impressive without being
breathtaking, but good enough for any level we can realistically expect to occupy in the
foreseeable future and a damn sight better than one should reasonably hope for in this
division. The views are excellent, and for the first time in my life I can see all four
corners, though why I might want to is another matter. Facilities are average and the
toilets are actually civilised (for how long)? Eventually I might even learn to accept the
prices, which are as low as will cover the mortgage. Admittedly it didn't feel like home -
more like an exceptional away ground - but we should get used to our new surroundings and
in time they may come to seem familiar and comfortable. Like all new grounds, it lacks a
soul, but that could come later. The Bob Lord and Cricket Field stands are like old
friends to me, but there must have been a time not so long ago when they seemed intrusive
and strange. Scattered to four corners it’s impossible to generate noise like we used
to, but even some kind of atmosphere may return after a while. The old days are gone,
though, and we shall never again reach the decibel peaks of yore. Still, I can’t help
thinking my timing was right. I lived my reckless youth on the terraces, taking it all too
seriously and getting alternately enraptured and furious, and now in my dotage I can sit
with an open mind in the stands, not getting too carried away.
Oh, but the floodlights. Where have they gone? What are these dreadfully disappointing
non-league matchsticks doing where mighty steel pylons once stood? I know they are
brighter - premier league standard, indeed - but impressive? No.
I will cheerfully admit to being a connoisseur of floodlights. Aren’t all football
fans a little? Who hasn’t spied floodlights from a train and craned his neck to catch
a glimpse and work out whose ground it must be? Who hasn’t felt some schoolkid
throwback to time spent learning grounds, strips and nicknames (official, never used) from
the Observer Book of Football? And who hasn’t averted their eyes to the left
between Mill Hill and Blackburn stations to avoid the glare of that alien monstrosity? To
me football grounds are innately interesting. And how do we spot a football ground? By its
floodlights, of course. Who hasn’t navigated their way to an unknown ground by use of
these trusty landmarks? How else are made possible apocrypha like the futile trek to
railway sidings or even rugby grounds?
For this part of football folklore, the writing is on the wall. It has been for some
time now. It started with fancy foreign football with their big stands with lights on the
roofs and spread rash-like to modern day collisea like Old Trafford. Ever since then, the
game has been up (a case of apres moi, le deluge?) If you want big stands you fix
lights to the roof, and in the modern family game there’s simply no place for phallic
pylons commanding the corners of the ground. One of the unpublicised but saddest outcomes
of the Taylor Report has been the gradual disappearance of floodlights from football, with
the erection of new, integrally lighted stands. Or if not that, then in the place of
mighty chunky towers have been thrown up slender poles of steel, of the kind seen on a
thousand council sports grounds that attract not a second glance and will never brighten
up a dreary journey. This being Burnley, our lighting remains a compromise. Far better to
go the whole hog than to divide luminescence half-and-half between two ways. It seems to
me that if you can’t do it properly, stick to proper floodlights rather than use a
couple of poles with a few bulbs on to draw attention to what is not there. How bad are
our new floodlights? Charlton have some like them.
When I was up north getting married in August, the local paper revealed two items of
news apparently unconnected. One, Overson was coming home. Two, large cranes had been used
to install floodlights of the new kind in two corners of the ground. But you must see the
connection: just as Burnley were signing a player from our past, attempting to reestablish
a connection with better times, more worthy symbols of our glorious heritage were giving
way. We were getting bang up to date, with all its unpleasant connotations, off the pitch,
while looking backwards on it.
Matches played at night are special, different to the bread and butter of a Saturday.
Those lights looked down on cup replays in front of packed houses and shed an eerie blue
glow on a huddled few thousand for mindless auto wotsit games. Robbie Painter scoring
after sixteen seconds wouldn’t have been the same by day. The two best games in the
last five years - the York Game, the Plymouth play-off - were both night matches. By day
(even with - or perhaps because of - the enhanced alcohol intake opportunities Saturday
provides) it just can’t be as good.
For those evening games when I lived in Nelson it was almost worth catching the wrong
bus with its interminable ride over the tops for the glimpse from the hill of the distant
Turf, invitingly gleaming, the grass an improbable shade of green, to see it glowing down
below and feel the sense of anticipation: that’s where we’re going.
Still, on that bus you missed the bloody kick off unless you ran, so let’s not get
overexcited.
You could see the floodlights from anywhere. Long before I got off my fat arse to
bother going to the game I knew exactly where the ground was. I knew it by the
floodlights, which would suddenly strike the eye from all parts of town: crossing the road
down from Burnley Central to the shops, looming over the Co-op, or from the bus station on
the other side of the bridge, and from the slow train to Preston where one could strain
one’s neck for a last acute glance. There’s still a residual pleasure from
seeing the whole town spread out maplike from the top of Manchester Road, with the ground
to the right. You see, the club is at the heart of town in more than one way, and the
floodlights were a permanent reminder of its presence, nudging the memory in bleak times
at odd moments when one was going about one’s business that the club was still there.
Well, no amount of petty nostalgia will restore them now. I wonder what happened to
them? I suppose they were scrapped, making a few bob for the club coffers: a sad and
inappropriate end. I would prefer to think that we had passed them on to someone who might
have a use for them, as we did with our old turnstiles, which went to Bradford Park Avenue
for their new ground. It is heartening to know that there is some part of a Yorkshire
field forever Burnley - the away end, apparently. Our motives were financial, naturally.
The other Bradford club similarly looked after their pennies when they sold a whole stand
for five grand to I can’t remember who, although here `stand’ is perhaps a
misnomer for a ginnel reminiscent of Holt House. I admire that attitude of `waste not want
not.’ It would be good to know that somewhere, at some level, 22 men are plying their
trade under lights proudly made in Bolton still adorned with TSB adverts from the days
before privatisation had even been thought of. No-one would want them, though, would they?
These days everyone has these poles with a few bright lights at the top.
As do we. I suppose in twenty years’ time I might be similarly eulogising some
other part of the ground ready for the axe. I like having premier league standard
illumination; it’s just unfortunate that we can see all the brighter a team
that’s never going to reach such heights. There may even be times when we wish for
dimmer lights to hide dismal play and diminishing crowds. But that’s where we are
now: brighter, yes; not better, though.
Firmo
1996
